The Dawn of Digital and Film Sound Sync: Tales from the 1980s

Only a few years out of film school at the time, I had been working on independent films, music videos, and documentaries to gain experience. The mid-1980s was a fascinating time for audio and video production. Prices for equipment that used digital technology had finally reached the point where the hardware became affordable for independent production budgets. While film and video were still in rival and presumed never-the-twain-shall-meet camps (the notion boggles the mind in 2021!), digital audio had made great strides towards commercialization into the high tech audiophile and low budget professional markets.

Although this was before hard drive storage for digital audio had become practical and tape was still the medium of the day, the first use of video cassettes as a storage medium for digital audio emerged with Sony’s PCM-F1 Digital Recording Processor, which used the Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) format, and was also sold as a tabletop consumer adaptor unit branded as the 501 ES, a similar unit which was also licensed to Matsushita/Technics. The PCM-F1 converted analog audio into 16 bit/44.1 kHz digital audio, but stored it as a video signal which could be recorded on 3/4-inch U-Matic, Betacam or VHS video cassettes. The video tape, made to hold not only standard stereo audio but full spectrum color video, was considerably more convenient, robust and capable of storing the digital info as binary code than the Ampex 456 or other industry-standard audio tape at the time.

Additionally, MIDI samplers that could store sounds on floppy disks and could be keyboard-controlled became available at reasonable and even budget prices for the first time. The Akai S612, Korg DSS-1, Emu Emax and Roland S-10 were a few of the better models.

I had partnered up with a classmate, Dan Godzich, to form an entertainment company to produce independent film and video. We previously had shot a couple of student project feature-length videos on VHS equipment, and then produced a music video (ironically shot on 16mm film) for my band, Nekron 99. The music video, “Reincarnations,” was a quarter finalist in MTV’s The MTV Basement Tapes competition.

An opportunity arose for Dan to write and direct a feature film with a predominantly French cast, through family business connections. Our entertainment company was effectively acquired by a larger French company and we went into pre-production.

When it came to budgeting for sound, I discussed with Dan about using all of the new digital technology that was available and that if we could find the right post-production studio and engineers to work with us, we might be able to cut the sound budget without skimping on audio quality. Little did we know that the audacity of our inexperience would eventually lead us to achieve a small milestone in independent film sound in 1986.

Our theoretical rationale was:

• We had experience in dealing with SMPTE time code for video and film sync, which was required due to the differential in the frames per second rate for each format (24 fps for film vs. 30 fps for video), and we hypothesized that using analog 24-track 2-inch tape would yield higher sound quality and more mixing flexibility than if we used the 35mm mag track format more commonly used in film sound, a format which was much more expensive.
• If we were able to digitally record all of the sound effects and store them in a sample library, to then be keyboard-triggered for Foley (sound effects) work, this would again save us a considerable chunk of the sound budget without compromising quality.
• ADR (Automatic Dialog Replacement) would be required, since the film would have some actors speaking in French while others spoke in English, and those actors who were bi-lingual would be speaking both languages depending on with whom they were acting, and which language was more comfortable for the particular scene. The goal would be to have a complete English dialogue track, separate from a complete French dialogue track, with consistency of voices for each character.
• By using 24-track analog, we could mix down to 1-inch 8-track and have stereo dialogue, sound effects and music with an extra track for “wild” sounds and SMPTE for sync. (“Wild” sounds include crowd noises, wind, air conditioner rumble, or any other kind of background sounds that needed to be present for an entire shot.) This would then be transferred to separate optical tracks for international distribution, which would use the existing music and effects but then each region would hire their own actors to dub the dialogue in other languages.

While the tale of how the production money was raised and the guerilla methods we used to shoot the picture is a whole other story unto itself, suffice it to say that after we completed all photography, Dan sequestered himself in France to edit the film while I looked in New York for a place to handle all of the post-production sound requirements. The final edited online video cut, a compendium of footage shot mostly in high speed Betacam but also in 35mm film, would then be transferred to a 35mm negative in Los Angeles and then back to New York to Technicolor labs into a color-timed processed print for theatrical projection. (“Color-timed” refers to the film lab process of correcting the color when creating a fresh print from a negative.) We would then be taking a timecode video copy of the print to create the entire soundtrack.

The primary hurdle was finding a studio that understood what we planned to do and would be willing to work with us on what would be uncharted territory, since there was no guidebook or precedent for producing film sound using this type of inter-platform method, at least in New York City’s film and video production circles.

The one negotiating factor in our favor was that music recording and mixing studios at the time rarely dealt with feature films, and video work was confined to music videos. The budget we were prepared to spend was only perhaps 30 percent of what it would have cost to do it conventionally in a film sound facility at the time, but was a substantial amount of billable hours for a music recording studio.

After visiting over a dozen studios that either told us point blank that what we proposed was impossible or that they understood conceptually what we wanted to do but lacked the skills and knowledge to achieve our goals, we found Active Sound, a studio in Soho. The owners and engineers were former Right Track Studios veterans: Steve Tjaden and Carl Farrugia.

Steve had substantial experience working with computers and syncing with tape machines, lights, projections and video from his work with avant-garde performance artists and musicians, among them David Van Tieghem and Roma Baran (producer for Laurie Anderson). Carl was a former neighbor and apprentice of none other than Les Paul, the inventor of multi-track recording.

Active was a studio designed for electronic music production that utilized computers, sequencing, MIDI, and sampling, running off Mark of the Unicorn software. Although primarily consisting of a control room and a small alcove for overdubbing, it was perfect for our needs and in retrospect, was a forerunner for many studios today.

Active had a 24-track MCI JH24 recorder (critical since it could handle 14-inch reels, which would match a 20-minute film reel’s running time), a rebuilt Trident console, Yamaha NS-10 monitors, and a nice collection of outboard gear, such as LA-2A and dbx compressors, Pultec EQs, Lexicon delays and reverbs, an Ursa Major Space Station delay, and a collection of rack mounted Yamaha, Roland, Oberheim, Akai and Emu synths and samplers. They also had both U-matic and VHS storage for digital stereo mixdowns through a Sony PCM-501ES digital audio processor.